The Ultimate Chocolate

If you've been following my blog, you'd know that I am not really a chocolate person. I would sometimes crave for some chocolate cupcakes and some dark chocolate ganache, but after eating half a cupcake, I would be all ok already. I made some chocolate cupcakes the other day though, because I was trying out this technique of making a ganache with the food processor. I basically just processed some chocolates in the food processor, heated the same amount of heavy cream, and combined them in the processor afterwards. And voila! I have a shiny chocolate ganache. So what to do with the ganache? Make cupcakes! So I also made Sarah's Ultimate Chocolate Cupcake which is my favorite, because it's soft, fluffy and moist - qualities not very easy to get from other recipes. I just made 12 cupcakes, ate that piece after taking a picture, and gave out the rest to Thet and to Adam's niece and nephews.

The ganache was awesome. I would be making more ganache from now on, since it's way easier to make with the food processor. :)

Maddie's Birthday Cupcakes

As much as I'd love to bake, I really don't have much time lately to do so. I always have a lot of baking ideas and decorations in mind, but I very rarely get to execute them, or if I get to, I am already cramming. Much like the cake and cupcakes that I'm supposed to make for Maddie - Adam's niece. It was 3 weeks ago since I learned that I'd be baking for her birthday and all the while, I had so much ideas on how to do it. It's a pool party, so I was imagining beach, shells - and most of all - umbrellas! Her party was yesterday and I thought since it's a Sunday, I will have plenty of time over the weekend. I have all Saturday to do everything. Wrong.

So I woke up Saturday at 12nn! I overslept and Adam was calling me at around lunch time, and he was even apologetic for having woken me up. Haha, I needed to wake up already! And then I had a mail that I had to pick up and the post office closes at 3 on Saturdays. So after a shower and a sandwich, I was headed to El Dorado Hills Post Office, only to find out that they made a mistake and my mail is actually in Folsom. So I drove back to Folsom, barely made it, got my mail and brought some stamps. It was already almost 4, and I went to Michael's to buy matching blue and pink ribbons, some glue, and some tissue to cover the cupcake tower. It was already 6 by the time I got home. And then I got on the phone, with my mom and with Adam. By the time I started mixing batter, it was already 8. Huge headache + oversleeping = yet another sleepy head. LOL.

To cut a long story short, I already have 34 chocolate chip cupcakes, 20 vanilla cupcakes, and a 6in cream cheese pound cake at 4am, fully decorated and ready to go. Talk about Iron Chef baking. I'm so sleepy. These was one of those days though that I got close to what I had in mind. Close but not quite. For one - those darn wilton paper cups are so nasty. I will never use those again to bake! I'm happy that I was able to incorporate the umbrellas in the design. The kids loved it.

Here's while I was setting up the cupcakes.